Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Hoiman and the Solar Circuit
By Gordon Dewey
ay day! I scrawled my Larry Maloney across the back of the check andhanded it to Nick, the bartender. "Leave me something to operate on,"I told him.
Nick turned it over. "Still with the News?"
The question was rhetorical. I let it pass without swinging at it. Iwas mentally estimating the total of the pile of tabs Nick pulled outof the cash register, like a fighter on percentage trying to count thehouse. I didn't like the figure it gave me.
Nick added them up, then added them again before he pulled some billsout of the money drawer and said, "Here's thirty skins. Your rentdue?"
"This'll cover it. I'll do my drinking here."
I went over to a booth and sat down. I lit a cigarette. I smoked. Andwaited. Presently Sherry, tall, dark and delicious, decided I wasmaking like a customer, and strolled over. "Would you like a menu, Mr.Maloney?" she trilled.
"Larry to you," I reminded her. "No menu. Bring me a steak. Big.Thick. Rare. And a plate of french fries. No salad. Bread and butter.Coffee."
She managed at last to pull her writing hand out of mine, and I had torepeat the order. Unless it could be turned into money, Sherry'smemory was limited strictly to the present instant.
She put in the order, then brought me a set-up. I let my eyes go overher, real careful, for maybe the thousandth time. No doubt of it—thelassie had a classy chassis. If she just wouldn't yak so damn much.
It looked as though Hoiman's Bum would be rememberedon Mars."Did you see the matches last night?" She didn't wait for my answer,just went on with the yat-a-ta. "I spent the whole evening just gluedto my television set. I was simply enthralled. When the HorribleHungarian got the Flying Hackensack on—"
"Standing Hackenschmidt, Sherry!"
"—poor little Billie McElroy I wanted to—to scratch his eyes out."
I pointed out that McElroy weighed in at two forty-one and had gone onto win the match. Sherry never heard me.
"And the way the Weeping Greek kept hitting the other fellow—theannouncer said he was throwing Judo cutlets."
"Cuts, not cutlets."
"But aren't Judo cutlets illegitimate?" The barest hint of a puzzledfrown tugged at her flawless brows as she poured ice water into myglass.
"The word," I repeated, "is cuts. And the blow is not illegal." Igave my eyes another treat. What a chassis. And what a mind."Anything these days, so long as you don't kill your opponent, islegal in wrestling."
Suddenly we had company: a little man who made scarcely a sound as heslid into my booth a